


you love me so endlessly

by ShyAudacity



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Jughead Jones, Bisexual Archie Andrews, Blackouts, Blood and Injury, Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Car Accidents, Crying, Drowning, Fluff, Hospitals, Hurt Jughead Jones, Immortality, Immortals, M/M, Marriage, Mental Health Issues, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mythology - Freeform, Panic, Self-Destruction, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death, Vomiting, Witches, its at the very end soooooo, its only mentioned sooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 11:00:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11311998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShyAudacity/pseuds/ShyAudacity
Summary: Jughead is so distracted, that he doesn’t even realize he hasn’t been paying attention to the road until he’s driven his Dad’s truck directly into a street lamp.He knows what the limbo state feels like this time around, he saw it coming as soon as the airbag made contact with his chest. Every time that he dies, he stays dead a minute longer than he time before. Jughead feels his body putting itself back together, bones healing as if it were nothing. It takes six minutes for his heart to start beating again, when he opens his eyes, the paramedics haven’t even arrived yet.Later, Jughead is sitting up behind a curtain in the emergency room when Archie comes running in. After throwing the curtain aside, he moves towards Jughead. Archie touches his face tenderly, his own full of distress. He gives Jughead a look of utter disbelief, gaping at him.“What’s wrong? I’m just fine.”“Jug… you should be dead.”“I know,” Jughead whispers. “I know… I can’t figure out why I’m not.”ORJughead is Immortal and does not deal with it well.





	you love me so endlessly

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea from a prompt that I saw on tumblr, not given to me, and it got away from me. 
> 
> Unbeta'd. Please let me know if you find mistakes or think I should add any tags.

When he was three, Jughead’s appendix burst. It wasn’t until his fever sky rocketed to 105 that his parents realized they needed to take him to the emergency room. He’d been immediately rushed into emergency surgery; he had flatlined on the operating table for thirty seconds before his heart started beating again. The doctor tells his parents over and over again how lucky they are that Jughead is still alive.

A year later, FP had stepped out into the living room to catch the tail end of a basketball game, came back to the bathroom to find his son face down in the bathtub. FP yanked him out, and it was another sixty seconds before Jughead coughs back to consciousness. FP had cradled his son to his chest, apologizing repeatedly and crying into his dark mess of hair.

The next morning, FP took Jughead to the local shopping mall. He told Jughead that he could pick out anything he wanted so long as he promised not to tell anyone what happened the night before. An hour later, Jughead walked out of the mall with a Chocolate Chip Cookie, a new crown beanie, and a shit eating grin on his face. 

When he was twelve, Jughead and Archie were hanging out in the tree house. They were having some light-hearted argument over whether Batman or Superman would win in a fight. Archie had shoved Jughead a little; Jughead tripped over his own foot, then out of the opening of the tree house. He had landed flat on his back, his head colliding forcefully with the ground.

He woke up two minutes later to find Archie on his knees a foot away from him, bent over and crying loudly into his hands. Jughead sat up, confused at the sight.

“What’s the matter?”

 Archie’s head whipped up at the sound, he sputtered, then tackled Jughead in a hug. Jughead squirmed his way out of it, confused as to why his friend was hugging him in the first place. He asked Archie again about why he was crying.

“I thought you were dead!” Archie exclaimed.

Jughead pulled a sour face, then looked up, realizing that he _actually had_ fallen ten feet to the ground from the opening of the treehouse. A little voice in his head tells him that he should be dead. Or, at the least, have broken six different bones in his body, but he pushes it down. He can save that discussion for a rainy day. He looks back to Archie, shrugs, then gets to his feet, asks if he wants to go get a milkshake.

When he was fourteen, he’d cut his palm open helping his mom chop tomatoes for dinner. He’d run into the bathroom, blood already pooling in his hand. On some level, he knows that he hit a nerve, in the way that he could stick the tip of his finger inside of the wound. He’s bleeding faster than he can grab more tissues. He passes out at some point, wakes up three minutes later to find that his hand is already scabbing over. By the time he goes to bed that night, his hand looks as though it were never injured in the first place.

At sixteen, he’s tried everything. He’s been nearly suicidal for months, and he can’t for the life of him figure out why he’s not dead. He’d been thinking back on all of the things that had gone wrong in his life; specifically, all of the moments that he can’t explain how he’d walked away from.

Last month, he had taken a running leap off the top of the high school, head first into the pavement. Four minutes later, he gasped back into lively hood, a janitor standing over him and asking why he isn’t in class. Two weeks after that, he swallows half a bottle of his mom’s old migraine medication. Jughead passes out on the floor on his bedroom, then wakes up five minutes later, covered in his own vomit. Not knowing what else to do, he stands in the shower and cries out of anger.

Now, he’s supposed to be at Archie’s for a movie date night. As he drives, the voice in the back of his head returns, telling him: _you should be dead, you dumb kid._ Jughead is so distracted, that he doesn’t even realize he hasn’t been paying attention to the road until he’s driven his Dad’s truck directly into a street lamp.

He knows what the limbo state feels like this time around, he saw it coming as soon as the airbag made contact with his chest. Every time that he dies, he stays dead a minute longer than he time before. Jughead feels his body putting itself back together, bones healing as if it were nothing. It takes six minutes for his heart to start beating again, when he opens his eyes, the paramedics haven’t even arrived yet.

Later, Jughead is sitting up behind a curtain in the emergency room when Archie comes running in. After throwing the curtain aside, he moves towards Jughead. Archie touches his face tenderly, his own full of distress. He gives Jughead a look of utter disbelief, gaping at him.

“What’s wrong? I’m just fine.” Jughead tells him, gripping Archie’s elbow.

“I saw it, I saw the truck. It looks like you got into a fight with a Transformer and lost- Jug… you should be dead.”

His heart seizes painfully inside of his chest. Jughead had been hoping that it would never come to this, that he wouldn’t ever have to show Archie this part of himself that he still can’t make sense of. He nods his head, leaning into Archie’s touch.

“I know,” Jughead whispers. “I know… I can’t figure out why I’m not.”

***

Jughead is released an hour later; himself and Archie go back to the Andrews house and stay up late into the night, trying to find an answer. Somewhere around the two in the morning mark, Archie finds himself scrolling through a pdf file of a Mythology textbook, when the word Immortal catches his eye.

“Maybe you’re Immortal, you know? Like you can’t die or something.”

“But I have died, Arch, six times, well seven if you include today and I’m remembering correctly.”

“Well maybe you can’t stay dead.” Archie says, continue to read the passage. “This says that a person can only be Immortal if they’re the third of their kind. That doesn’t make any sense you’re not- oh my god.”

“What? What is it?”

“Your name.”

“Yeah? It sucks, what about it?”

“You’re Forsythe Pendleton Jones _the Third,_ you’re the third of your kind.”

“…You gotta be fucking kidding me.”  

***

After that night, Jughead removes the word “Careful” from his vocabulary. Himself and Archie stay together, he considers it to be the only good thing that he has going on in his sad life. Jughead doesn’t tell the rest of his friends right away. He makes all of them wait; he finds humor in watching them squirm at his destructive tendencies.

Veronica finds out last. In the middle of their senior year, as they’re walking back from Pop’s, she watches Jughead begin to cross the street without looking, narrowly missing getting hit by a car. She had yanked him back, asking him if he’d lost his mind.

“No,” He deadpanned. “I haven’t the ability to die.”

Veronica had dragged him back to her house, made him tell her everything. Jughead complied, not once showing any remorse for having nearly gotten himself killed an hour before. She shook her head at him, still trying to wrap her head around the new information. She thought back on all of the ridiculous, dangerous things she’s seen Jughead do; all of it began to make sense in a sick, sad way.

“You need to stop doing this. You can’t keep doing these menacing acts just for the thrill of it. Just because you’re invincible or whatever doesn’t mean you should make the people who love you watch you suffer.”

“It’s not like I can  _die,”_ Jughead said, sounding suspiciously sulky. 

Veronica seized hold of his chin, abruptly livid. “No, you can’t die. But you know what you can do? You can suffer. You can be covered in third degree burns for the rest of your extremely long life, or have brain damage, or be stuck with every limb broken. In fact, if I were you, I would start being very kind to myself. Because you. Can’t. Die.”

Jughead considered spitting out some remark about how he never stays injured for very long, but decided against, having seen the hurt look that settled on her face. He jerks his chin out of her grip, focusing his attention on dejectedly picking at a fraying spot on his blue jeans.

Veronica leaves him alone in her dining room after, not knowing what she could possibly say that would make him alter his cataclysmic behavior.

***

“What’s it like?” Archie asked one night as the two of them were lying together in bed. “Dying, I mean.” 

Jughead knows that Archie has wanted to ask the question. He could see it on Archie’s face last year, the day after Jughead’s car had slid on a patch of ice and rolled into a busy intersection. He doesn’t know how to answer the question, no matter how much he thinks about it. In some sense, even if he could, he’s not sure that he would want to tell anyone about it in the first place.

He’s twenty-one now, and he doesn’t like to think about it. It already haunts him that one day all of his friends are going to be dead and he’s going to be stuck here, all by his lonesome. It eats at him most nights as he tries to fall asleep, a premature sense of grief. Jughead will never be prepared for the day he has to say goodbye to Archie, just thinking about it makes him sick to his stomach.

“I don’t know,” Jughead replied, avoiding the question. “I’m not exactly very good at it, am I?”

***

“Remind me again why we’re doing this.” Jughead inquired from the passenger seat. Archie had insisted that they take a weekend trip to go visit his cousin, Sabrina, up in Greendale. Jughead had been apprehensive until Archie explained further.

Sabrina is a witch, or so she says that she is. They hadn’t talked in years, but she’d been more than willing to talk to Jughead after Archie reached out to her. He had skirted around the issue over the phone, knowing that this was Jughead’s story to tell, not his.

“If anyone knows how to fix your mortality issue, or the lack thereof, I bet that it’s her.”

“That doesn’t explain what we’re doing here.”

“Because, Jughead, you’re miserable,” Archie bursts out, “And everyone around you can see it. I don’t care how much you deny it, I know that this bothers you. If there’s a way to fix this, then we’re damn well going to find it. I’m tired of seeing you hurt all the time, I don’t want that for you.”

Jughead feels slightly ashamed of himself for being so publicly on his path of destruction. He looks out of the car window, spotting the reason that they had come here. Across the street, there’s a little shop with a sign hung above the door that reads: _Sabrina’s Sorcery_. Jughead sighs, a sense of nervousness tugging at his stomach.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Archie asks, ever concerned and keeping Jughead’s best interest in mind.

He shakes his, leaning over to kiss Archie on the cheek. “No, no I should do this by myself. Just wait here, I don’t think that I’ll be very long.”

As he steps out of the car, he feels his heart begin to race, suddenly feeling more anxious with Archie by his side.

Walking into the shop is like stepping into another world. The smell of incense hits his nostrils as soon as Jughead crosses the threshold, he finds it to be almost overwhelming. All of the shelves are lined with candles, stones, and other strange things that Jughead doesn’t know the names of.

A blonde girl that doesn’t look to be much older than him appears from some hidden back room, and she grins lightly at him.

“Hi, is there something that I can help you find?”   

“Yeah I’m looking for Sabrina-.”

“You’re Jughead, Archie’s boyfriend?” When he nods, she continues. “He told me that you might stop by. What’s up? What’s bring you to my shop?”

“You might not believe me if I tell you.”

“I assure you, whatever it is, I’ve heard stranger. C’mon, try me, do your worst.”

Jughead lets out a deep breath before speaking. “I can’t die… I’m Immortal.”

He doesn’t miss the way that Sabrina’s face falls at his words. She grimaces, giving him a pitiful look; Jughead knows that look, he’s seen his friends wear the same look for years.

“I’m sorry.”

Jughead laughs a little, trying to starve off the panic gnawing at him. “That’s it? You’re sorry? You mean you’re not even going to try and fix this? Archie told me that you’re a witch; there has to be something that you can do, so do it. Fix it.”   
  
“I can’t.”  
  
He dropped to his knees in an instant, a sick feeling curdling in the pit of his stomach. Jughead’s voice cracked as he spoke. “Please - see, I’m begging and everything, just fix it. _Please._ I don’t want to be like this anymore, please just tell me how to fix this.”

“I  _can’t,”_ Sabrina said, pulling him to his feet. “I’m not saying it to spite you, I literally can’t. This is beyond my power. I’m sorry.”  
  
Jughead stared at her in numb disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

“The Immortality, it’s irreversible. Never, not once, have I ever heard of a case where someone was able to change their fate. I know this isn’t the answer that you wanted, Jughead, but it’s all that I can give you. I really am sorry.”

He watches Sabrina walk away; his heart falls to the floor, rolls away from his feet. He can’t breathe, not like he’s supposed to at least. He moves blindly trying to find his way to the door, having been filled with panic and a new sense heartache makes it hard for him to focus on the task at hand. Once he gets to the door, he pushes it open, already searching for Archie.

Archie is parked down the street, leaning against his car, but moves towards Jughead as soon as he realizes that something isn’t right. Jughead all but collapses into his boyfriend’s grip, his legs giving out on him. He cries into Archie’s chest as the redhead holds him up, not caring that people are staring.

Archie speaks quietly in Jughead’s ear. “Hey, hey Jug. You’re okay, sweetheart, you’re okay. I got you, it’s okay… we’ll figure something out.”

Overwhelmed, Jughead thinks to himself: _You can’t. You can’t figure something out, I doomed, I’m going to be like this forever._

***

After they get back to Riverdale, back to their little apartment on the edge of town, Jughead doesn’t leave his room for a week. Hell, he barely gets out of bed. When he finally does, he gets up and goes to the Whyte Wyrm. He hustles his dad’s old friend’s out of their money in endless games of Billiard and drinks himself silly. This goes on for months, Jughead will spend days in bed and then get up only to go out and get shit faced. It doesn’t drown his sorrows, but it does distract him for a little while.  

Four months in, after the bartender has kicked him out for the second time that week already, he spits out a new threat as he shoves Jughead out the door.

“Don’t come back here, kid. If you do, I’ll kill you, you hear me?”

Jughead had half slurred, half yelled back. “Tell me how and I’ll do it myself!”

***

Jughead quits his rage drinking eventually. Only after he killed a bottle and a half of whiskey in less than two hours, and then felt his breathing go shallow as he was on his way to the kitchen. Eight minutes later, he woke up with a fading headache and found Archie standing in front of the sink, pouring all of their liquor down the drain.

His depression only worsens after that. Jughead sleeps most of the day, barely gets any work done even though he works from home. It comes to the surface one afternoon when Archie walks into their bedroom, finds Jughead still in bed and yanks off all of the covers.

“I was using those.” Jughead grumbled, his head hidden by mound of pillows.

“I don’t care. You’re not sleeping anymore, get out of bed. It’s doing you any good to sleep all day. You haven’t touched your computer in almost a week. You aren’t doing yourself any favors by throwing a pity party for yourself all the time.”

“It’s not like this is going to kill me,” He snaps, sitting up. “I can’t die, Archie.”

“Exactly, so stop acting like you are!” Archie yells back. “Did it ever occur to you that this hurts me, too? You spend all of your time in bed. When you’re not in bed, you’re complaining about your situation. Nothing is ever good enough of you these days, I can’t make you happy anymore.”

“Are you kidding? You’re the only good thing that I’ve got going for me.”

“That can’t be your only sense of motivation, don’t you get that? I want to be your lover, not your entire life, Jug. Most people would kill to have what you’ve got, and here you are wishing you were dead. I love you, alright? I do, but this “I’m doomed for all eternity” act got old months ago. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, get out of bed, and fucking do something already.”

“I never said that I wished I was dead.” Jughead whispers, mostly to himself.

“Oh yeah? Well you could have fooled me.” Archie storms out after that, slamming the door as he leaves.

Jughead doesn’t get out of bed, not right away at least. He lies there for another hour before he rolls out of bed, takes a shower for the first in almost a week, then goes into his makeshift office and starts working on articles and book reviews that he was supposed to have finished two days before. He sits there for hours, not moving until he’s completed all of his overdue work and sent a formal email to his boss. She responds within the hour, fully understanding of the situation, but still threatens his job if he doesn’t shape up.

Somewhere around midnight, Jughead leaves his office in search of coffee. On his way to the kitchen he finds Archie asleep on the couch, facing away from him. Even in the dim light, Jughead doesn’t fail to notice that Archie’s eyes are puffy, signs of crying written all over his body. Jughead lowers himself onto the couch, curling around Archie’s backside, hooking his chin over Archie’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” Jughead says to his sleeping partner quietly. “… I’m sorry that you have to deal with all of this. I’m just gonna miss you like hell.”

Jughead apologizes again in the morning over breakfast, leaving out the part about missing him. He promises that he’s going to make a better effort, beginning to accept the fact that he’s going to be here for a while.

***

Jughead proposes to Archie six months later while they’re watching a movie on the couch. He’s twenty-four and in love and just wants this thing he has with Archie to last for as long as it possibly can. Archie is half way to drunk on wine and can’t help but gape at Jughead, uncertain if he’d heard him correctly.

“I know that it sounds crazy, and it’s the last thing that you expected from me. But I’m not going to have you around all the time, but I want to know that you’re with me while I’ve got you here. I wanna spend every second that I can with you as my husband, please say that you’ll marry me.”

Archie had lunged for him, kissing him like there was no tomorrow. Both of them cried, and the next day they went and picked out a ring.

Veronica and Betty insisted that they have a reception, despite Jughead’s protest. In the end they keep it small, close friends and family only. It’s the best day that Jughead has had in years, since before he learned about being Immortal, since he was a kid and all he had was a dream about growing old with his best friend. Jughead may not get to grow old, but he still has Archie at his side, and for now that’s good enough for him.

During the middle of their slow dance, Jughead pulls his face out of where he had hidden in Archie’s neck to look him in the eye. He rubs his thumb over Archie’s jaw, a familiar sense of fondness coming over him.

“What? What are you thinking about?” Archie asks over the music.

Jughead responds, and he knows that it’s the most honest thing that he might ever say.

“I’m glad I did not die before I had the chance to see this.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, thanks so much for reading my fic! If you liked it, please let me know with a comment or a kudos. If you have a prompt for me, you can leave it here or at my Riverdale blog via Tumblr (thejugheadchronicles). Thanks again for reading, have a great day!


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